Scaling analysis of FLIC fermion actions

The Fat Link Irrelevant Clover (FLIC) fermion action is a variant of the $O(a)$-improved Wilson action where the irrelevant operators are constructed using smeared links. While the use of such smearing allows for the use of highly improved definitions of the field strength tensor $F_{\mu\nu},$ we show that the standard 1-loop clover term with a mean field improved coefficient $c_{\rm sw}$ is sufficient to remove the $O(a)$ errors, avoiding the need for non-perturbative tuning. This result enables efficient dynamical simulations in QCD with the FLIC fermion action.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Isolating the Roper Resonance in Lattice QCD

We present results for the first positive parity excited state of the nucleon, namely, the Roper resonance ($N^{{{1/2}}^{+}}$=1440 MeV) from a variational analysis technique. The analysis is performed for pion masses as low as 224 MeV in quenched QCD with the FLIC fermion action. A wide variety of smeared-smeared correlation functions are used to construct correlation matrices. This is done in order to find a suitable basis of operators for the variational analysis such that eigenstates of the QCD Hamiltonian may be isolated. A lower lying Roper state is observed that approaches the physical Roper state. To the best of our knowledge, the first time this state has been identified at light quark masses using a variational approach.Comment: 7pp, 4 figures; minor typos corrected and one Ref. adde